I try so hard but I'm now wondering if Nature might do a better job than me trying to nurture these Monarch caterpillars. Some are looking rather sickly... with a slight shade of black to their color. I looked it up online and looks like it might be "Black Death", which is caused by a bacteria. Noooo....!!
I noticed some sluggish caterpillars on the bottom of the butterfly cage. I had spread out some newspapers at the bottom for easy clean-up. These things poop so much!
Another sickly looking one :-(
Just then, a Monarch butterfly flutters around. Hope she will lay for eggs!
Here's a healthy-looking caterpillar munching away. Hopefully we will have some survivors. Supposedly the bacteria can spread to other caterpillars too:
I'm guessing that when I had the caterpillars in the cage, it was too hot and there was too much moisture which caused the bacteria to grow. I think I'm going to just start leaving it to Mother Nature from now on. I'll just have to keep providing the milkweed as food for these hungry caterpillars!
It was just so much fun though for the boys to see the chrysalis and waiting for that opportunity to see the butterfly emerge. We didn't get to see that last year but we did have our first butterfly hatch around this same time last year: Our very first Monarch butterfly
What an exciting moment that was!
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